Philip WeinsteinMar 8, 20224 minBecoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William FaulknerRead an excerpt below: None of these chapters scrupulously respects chronological order (although my narrative does...
Philip WeinsteinMar 7, 20222 minUnknowing: The Work of Modernist FictionRead an excerpt below: What is at stake when a group of major modernist writers centers their fiction on unknowing? Decades of...
Philip WeinsteinMar 6, 20222 minJonathan Franzen: The Comedy of RageRead an excerpt below: Moving back and forth among Franzen’s essays and novels, I propose to chart a single writer’s odyssey. In so...
Philip WeinsteinMar 5, 20222 minSimply FaulknerRead an excerpt below: Let’s begin by acknowledging that Simply Faulkner does not imply a simple Faulkner. The word “simply” runs the...
Philip WeinsteinMar 4, 20221 minFaulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One OwnsRead an excerpt below: Abiding commitment to a writer may continue indefinitely, yet styles of interpretation change—sometimes...
Philip WeinsteinMar 4, 20221 minHenry James and the Requirements of the ImaginationRead an excerpt below: When, as a sophomore in college, I first came into contact with the work of Henry James, I chanced to read him at...
Philip WeinsteinMar 3, 20221 minThe Semantics of Desire: Changing Models of Identity from Dickens to JoyceRead an excerpt below: Semantics and desire, signification and force, cultural value and natural impulse: the interplay of these paired...
Philip WeinsteinMar 2, 20222 minWhat Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and MorrisonRead an excerpt below: “What else but love?” Guitar makes this answer to Milkman (in Morrison’s Song of Solomon), when he identifies the...
Philip Weinstein3 minSoul-ErrorRead an excerpt below: “My title suggests something awry at our human core. The opening chapter of the same title (a phrase from the...